Advancements in the Technical Process

I'm now using 0.5mm drafting pens for the inking, where previously I was using either Extra Fine or Ultra Fine sharpies (I forget which). I'm not going to bother with the fancy textured grass and things like that which you can see in my recolourings of the first few comics; I want as much information to be conveyed by the ink as possible.

I've also tightened the lettering a bit, it's nice to be able to cram just that little bit more text in, or have it fit better. Seriously considering getting an oval guide, and not doing the cloudy-shaped speech bubbles any more.

Turns out I was scanning everything slightly wrong -- my scanner has a "photo" mode and a "document" mode, and the reason I had to do all the annoying correction and rebalancing after scanning was that "photo" mode doesn't pin the blacks to black and the whites to white. I know it means "photo" like "scanning a photo" but it acts more like "taking a low-contrast photograph of the page" which was really bothering me. Document mode fixes that, although it still picks up the non-copy blue pencil (but that's not a problem, as you'll see when I post my "how I make the comic" stuff)

So there are a few dozen people reading this comic regularly now, that's good. Don't forget to tell people you know about it! Even if you think they'll not like it, and maybe hate you for suggesting it. It's for the greater good, my friends!